Abstract:

Fitness and sociability online are two very interesting subjects for research at the moment. In this thesis the aim is to study a combination of these subjects, fitness-related web services with social features. The main motivation for this research is the validation of sociability heuristics devised in the PROFCOM project. In addition, the study aims to find out about users’ opinions regarding social aspects of fitness-related web services. The focus in the study is on sociability and what kind of social features users want included in such a web service, if any. The study also aims to describe how such features affect user experience.

The study was carried out using three fitness-related web services. These were Suunto Movescount, Nokia Sports Tracker and Polar Personal Trainer. Suunto Movescount was still being developed at the time of the study. The two other services had been in public use for several years. At the beginning of the study, heuristic evaluations were conducted to all three services in order to gather information about their social features and sociability. The evaluations were carried out using the eight PROFCOM sociability heuristics, Nielsen’s five participation guidelines and a collection of nine sociability heuristics devised by Preece.

In order to validate sociability heuristics and gather information regarding sociability in fitness-related web services, users from all three services were interviewed. A total of 20 interviews were carried out. In addition, the 10 interviewees who used Suunto Movescount took part in a diary study designed to gather information during the testing of the service. The results of the interviews and diary study were summarized and used to analyze the users’ opinions in regard to sociability. These results were also compared to the results of the heuristic evaluations in order to validate the sociability heuristics.

Based on the findings in this study, the sociability heuristics produce analogous results to those gathered from users when evaluating sociability. The most serious problems can be found by both methods although there are differences in the results in regard to less critical sociability issues. Some problems noted during heuristic evaluation are not necessarily problems for users and vice versa. This indicates that whilst heuristics can significantly help in evaluating sociability, using them as the only tool involves a risk of erroneous conclusions.

Interviewees’ opinions suggest that fitness-related web services that include social features should offer users different ways of interacting. It is also important to consider what users actually use the service for. If the main purpose is maintaining a training diary, social features should be designed to support this. On the other hand, if the focus is on creating an online community, the biggest effort should be aimed at designing ways of interaction that feel natural to users and encourage discussion among them. /Kir10

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